She backs away from me gives a spastic little wave before pulling her door closed.
“It speaks,” Ace announces, after a moment’s pause.
Stéphanie shushes him with a pointed look at Molly’s door. Ace drops his voice.
“What?” he asks. “We’ve been together for almost a year now, and I’ve never heard your roommate talk before.”
“Don’t be rude, Ace,” she whispers back. “She’s just shy.”
“You’re the one who calls herlapin.”
“Shhh!” Stéphanie hisses.
“Hey, guys,” I cut in, “I was serious about taking all the food, you know. You got anything to eat, Stéphanie? I’m starving.”
“You just ate, like, half your bodyweight in pizza and drank two beers!” Ace protests.
“Yeah, but then I had to run all the way here to take a piss, and now I’m hungry again. Have you got any ham, Stéphanie,ma belle?”
I’ve yet to find a problem in this world that a ham sandwich couldn’t solve.
“I don’t eat much meat,” she replies. She takes the two steps from the apartment door to the kitchen and grabs something out of the cupboard. “Here. Take this.”
I catch the foil-wrapped bar she tosses at me just as Ace groans. “If you feed them, they keep coming back.”
“Protein Punch,” I read from the label. “Twenty-four grams of protein in each serving packs a real punch!”
I rip the foil off and take a bite. Not bad.
“You all done extorting my girlfriend?” Ace asks. “Can we go now? We’ve got rehearsal.”
“It ’oo ’ot,” I complain around a mouthful of Protein Punch.
Ace glares at me. “How many times do we have to go over this? Chew, swallow,thentalk.”
I finish my bite and grin at Stéphanie. “Does he tell you to swallow too?”
“Christe alors!” Ace shouts, throwing his hands up in the air.
Stéphanie just laughs. “He doesn’t have totellme that.”
I point my protein bar at her. “I like this one, Ace. You picked a good one. She’s far too good for your sorry ass, man.”
His voice goes soft. “Yeah, I know it.”
He steps up beside her in the kitchen and grabs her waist, pulling her towards him for a kiss.
“Vraiment?” I demand. “Right in front of me? I believe you, okay, Stéphanie? I don’t need a demonstration of the swallowing.”
“Chien,” she chides, her attention still fixed on Ace as she calls me out on being a dog.
I don’t really think that’s fair, given the way they’re tongue fucking each other against the counter right now.
“I’m out, bitches!” I call.
Neither of them answers me as I make my way out of the apartment. I guess Ace will be catching up with me in a few moments.
Amon Amarth is still going strong in the unit across the hall, and I hum the tune of the song as I exit onto the street. It’s a bit difficult to hum the sound of gravelly man-screams, but I am, after all, a gifted and talented professional musician.
